(NaturalNews) Artificially sweetened drinks are often promoted as
healthy alternatives for weight loss and diabetes because they are low
in calories and don't contain sugar. However, there is plenty of
evidence to suggest that these diet sodas are harmful to human health.
According to Sharon Fowler, MPH, an authority on this subject, "Diet
soda is not a health food. In fact, it's not a food at all, it's simply a
slurry of chemicals, a number of which may have deleterious effects on
the body." Most recently diet sodas have been tied to increased risk of
stroke and heart attack, and while many people drink them as an aid to
weight reduction, research suggests if you drink diet soda, weight gain
may be the result instead.
Weight gain
In one study
linking diet beverages to weight gain, Hazuda, et. al. at the University
of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, recorded changes in
waist circumferences in 474 elderly participants in a 10-year study. As
part of the study they controlled for diabetes, physical activity,
neighborhood, age, sex and ethnicity. Findings showed that increases in
waist sizes were 70 percent greater among those who drank diet soft
drinks compared with those who did not. In addition, waist size
increases were as much as 500 percent greater amongst those that drank
two or more diet sodas a day.
In other research, Sharon Fowler
and colleagues studied eight years of data based on individuals between
25 and 64. Of the study participants who were of normal weight
in the beginning, a third were overweight or obese eight years later.
In evaluating the correlation between obesity and diet drinks
researchers found that every bottle of diet soda participants drank in a
day raised their obesity risk by 41 percent.
Diabetes
Aspartame,
a common sweetener in diet beverages, has also been linked to diabetes.
In an animal study conducted at UT San Antonio, researchers fed corn
oil-enriched feed to one group of mice and the same feed plus aspartame
to another group. Three months later the aspartame group had elevated
glucose levels but insulin levels that were equal to or less than those
of the control group, suggesting that aspartame may be part of the
connection between diet soda consumption and diabetes.
Corrupted Signals
What
is the reason for the diet soda weight gain connection? One theory is
that our bodies rely on a signaling system based on the quality of the
foods we eat. In the case of diet of soda,
the body experiences a sweet taste and expects calories; but when they
aren't forthcoming starts to crave food, which leads to overeating.
Psychologists at Purdue University tested this idea by comparing two
groups of rats, one which was fed yogurt with sugar and one which was
fed yogurt with saccharine. The saccharine rats ate significantly more
calories, gained more weight and put on more body fat than the control
group.
Sweet Cravings
Still another possibility is that
eating sweets dulls our taste buds causing us to eat more sugary foods
in compensation. Some 2011 research in the UK seems to support this
idea. The scientists found that consumption of two cans of soda
a day for a month resulted in a noticeable dulling of taste buds and
increased cravings for high calorie foods. Since artificial sweeteners
(which were not part of this particular study) are 200 to 300 times
sweeter than sugar, it is at least possible that they may have a similar
impact on our taste buds.
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